Chocolate Cereals Ranked Worst To Best

There's little question that if you're going to indulge in sugary breakfast cereal, something chocolate is the best choice among the most popular cereals on the shelf. It's like getting away with eating dessert for breakfast. It doesn't have to be dessert or breakfast, though. Chocolate cereal is as much an anytime snack as chips or crackers, but with a chocolatey touch that feels like decadence. Whether soaked in milk until soft or picked straight from the box and enjoyed as a dry snack, chocolate cereal can be a real day saver when sugary joy is in short supply, even with no toy surprise at the bottom of the box.

Considering the tasty goodness waiting inside, it might seem like there's no way to make a bad selection. And clearly, chocolatey cereals are not healthy overall. But there are bound to be winners and losers when it comes to flavor. We gathered up the best and brightest from the breakfast world to see how certain selections fare. While each player brings its own special flair to the table, there's a hierarchy to these cereal contenders. We break it down for you, one box at a time.

Oreo cookies passed through the shrink ray and turned into bowl-filling chocolate cereal oh-so-cleverly called Oreo O's? Yes, please and thank you. Who wouldn't love having one of the most beloved creations in snacking history for breakfast in a way that inspires less judgment than just dunking cookies in coffee? The possibilities are so delicious. Sweet teeth everywhere are set to tingle at the mere thought. Though Oreos come in a variety of flavors, Oreo O's focuses on the peerless original, a combo that sparked the cookies-and-cream movement in everything from ice cream to protein bars. Is having breakfast food that moves dessert to the front of the menu too big a dream to entertain? Not if Post Consumer Brands has anything to say about it.

Unfortunately, the dream is shattered once you realize these O's don't measure up to the heritage they bear. A strange powdered milk sourness overwhelms the chocolate and cream flavors, though milk doesn't appear on the ingredient list. How could such a potential win turn into so striking a loss? It's paradigm-shifting moments like this that lead shoppers to search for other ways to conquer their early morning chocolate yearnings in better cereals.

When budget is a consideration, Malt-O-Meal bagged cereal makes a great second-tier option for chocolate cereal fans to enjoy. Cocoa Dyno Bites are the company's sweet stab at recreating a chocolatey rice-based breakfast at a better price than the tonier name brands. As the MinnPost reports, Malt-O-Meal was originally a hot cereal that stood shoulder to shoulder with oatmeal. Decades of evolution saw the company expand into the dry cereal sector, offering one-offs of familiar creations with sneakily similar names. The association with other chocolate rice cereals with prehistoric branding is enough to draw attention to Malt-O-Meal's more attractively priced options.

Though actual dinosaurs may not have made it past the Cretaceous Period, Cocoa Dyno Bites have held their place in the breakfast aisle. As far as quality goes, it seems difficult to ruin chocolate-covered rice, which this bag does not. This is neither good nor bad, which also sums up the flavor of this cereal. It's near enough to real Cocoa Pebbles to make the decision a no-brainer when doing a price comparison. But that isn't nearly tasty enough to make this chocolate cereal competitor anything more than an also-ran in our best-of challenge.

Chocolate and peanut butter are usually a win when it comes to sweet flavor blends, a fact that Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios tries to prove without overplaying its hand. The combination is so closely associated with candy and desserts you can find entire collections of peanut butter recipes in which chocolate gets a co-starring credit. When a proven product like Cheerios jumps on the bandwagon, the result should be something beautiful. At least, that's the hope for anyone who spies the enticing image on the front of the box.

Sadly, those hopes were destined to be dashed into a thousand ring-shaped bits. With so many more flavorful options on the list, the trend toward subtlety here turns out to be a disadvantage. This Cheerio variant is not the tastiest treat found at the breakfast table. The flavor tends to wear off after the third chew, morphing from a sweet-ish chocolate-peanut butter blend into something that tastes like burnt sadness. Despite the banner announcing the inclusion of real cocoa and peanut butter, there isn't a lot of taste bud action that represents the best form of those two add-ins. There's not much to cheer about with these O's.

Adding chocolate to a health-leaning stalwart like Cheerios seems like a sure way to ruin a good thing — or a great idea to improve a boring thing, depending on your feelings about these largely unflavored oat-based O's. But Chocolate Cheerios takes a tasteful turn by adding a cocoa coating to its mediocre cereal and glows up into a slightly more impressive breakfast treat with actual flavor. The box proudly proclaims the inclusion of real cocoa among the ingredients to maintain its nutritious standing, though the list also includes sugar and corn syrup — no need to wring all the fun out of chocolate cereal.

As for the flavor itself, these tiny tidbits tend toward the dark side of the chocolate spectrum, an advisable bit of restraint that keeps the cereal squarely in the adult breakfast universe. And lest Cheerio choosers forget that they're making smarter moves in the heart-healthy dietary direction, the O's are interspersed with pieces shaped like little hearts. Sweet, clever, and tasty elements combine to make a winsome triple play. Overall, Chocolate Cheerios are a good choice for a walk-don't-run introduction to a sweeter morning, especially for anyone breaking good in favor of more healthful eating.

Hearing the name Chocolate Chex raises images of slicing your doormat into bite-sized squares and then adding cocoa powder to every third piece. Chex cereal leans so hard into the savory side of what a cereal can be as it's better known in its Chex Party Mix form than as a morning starter. Soaked in butter and seasoned to high heaven with pretzels and mixed nuts, Chex is a crowd-pleaser. But it's no rival for sweeter breakfast cereals, even those with health-conscious leanings. Could a smattering of chocolate possibly move the needle in any direction?

The pleasant surprise of an answer is a wholehearted yes, indeed. The flavor artists at General Mills took a cue from the company's popular Chex Muddy Buddies snacks, affectionately known as puppy chow, and added ample amounts of sweetened cocoa powder to their corn squares. The result is a cereal so surprisingly chocolatey it had to come in near the top of the rankings. This is one breakfast food as delicious dry as it is topped with milk. A caveat to the cereal fans: if you start snacking, be prepared to clean out the box. A hard-learned lesson but a tasty one.

As described on their website, Kashi began in 1984 as a California health food company. Through the years, the organization has maintained its commitment to providing thoughtful options for cautious breakfast fans. With Kashi Go Chocolate Crunch, this long-lasting outlet has created one of the best-tasting chocolate cereals around without compromising their nutritional integrity. It seems strange that, among a flavor-driven field so filled with possibilities, one of the simplest formulas turns out to be one of the most delicious as well. But Kashi defies expectations to take second place in our ranking, a turn of events even Nostradamus couldn't have seen coming. And he saw a lot of things.

The wildly textural nature of various bits and bites in Kashi may not seem like an obvious fit for the addition of chocolate. But this granola-like base was crying out for something softer amidst the crunchy nuggets and crisped rice, and chocolate coating and chips turn out to be the ideal candidates for the job. Whole grains and 10 grams of protein in a 3/4 cup serving mark this mix as a more mindful choice than some of the other members of the Chocolate Cereal Club.